Aleksandar Vučić easily managed to carry out electoral fraud in front of the public, both the Serbian and European public, and he must nonetheless be congratulated for that
He deserves to be congratulated for at least two reasons. Firstly, due to his successful restoration of the reservoir of patriotic legitimacy, which was “filled” with the criticisms and statements of European politicians regarding the election day of 17th December.
It was enough for him to mention “interference in our elections” to his voters for Vučić to retain his voluntary voters, and to them he has already justified all the concessions he grants to Albin Kurti. He thereby proves perfectly to the Serbian public that his hands are “firmly” tied when it comes to protecting the rights of Serbs in Kosovo.
The second reason is that he thereby simultaneously provides a strategic exit to the pro-Western ‘Serbia against violence’ [SPN] opposition coalition.
The SPN hasn’t recorded a single election victory over Vučić, but it has prompted the “punishing of the regime” on the part of European officials, and it thus has a success with which it can continue leading its voters, retaining their support despite their disappointment.
There is thus a continuation of the same challenge that we saw after the 2017 or 2022 elections, summed up in the fact that Vučić will continue rigging elections until some opposition figures are themselves in a position to rig or destroy them.
Absent some unforeseen occurrence, everything will remain as it has to date, and the remaining local elections might only serve to further consolidate Vučić’s victory, and not the other way around, as the opposition believes
Until then, Vučić’s regime firmly remains on the NATO course, if not quite on the European Union course, because as Yanis Varoufakis has written, the NATO concept tolerates dictatorships (previously in Spain, Greece and Portugal), while that tolerance has been beyond the concept of the EU to date.
Otherwise, the main point of contention between the EU and Serbian voters lies in the fact that Serbian voters expect Brussels to deliver on the rule of law, or to ensure equality before the law and justice, while the EU view is the other way around, whereby Serbian voters should deliver on this in order to move closer to Brussels.
Provided there are no sudden shifts in Kosovo, like the one-day war of 24th September in Banjska, or the inclusion of Vučić or some member of his family on the U.S. sanctions list, as is the case with Milorad Dodik, everything will continue as it has so far.
The SPN will accept its election mandates, with obstruction in some form, and will probably even accept those for the Belgrade City Assembly, given that the protests against election rigging didn’t achieve mass participation. The passage of time is making it increasingly certain that there will be no new Belgrade elections either.
And when spring brings local elections to the remaining half of the country’s local governments, Vučić won’t even bother conducting the same barefaced election fraud, but rather will allow them to unfold in the shadow of European Parliament elections. That’s because his voting strongholds remain even firmer, despite the inaccurate claims of the SPN that the only places not included in last December’s elections were those where SNS’s rating is falling and weakening. Quite the contrary.
Photo: Radenko Topalović
